Friday, 1 April 2011

If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world,no one will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you....

Who can free himself from achievement, and from fame, descend and be lost amid the masses of men?He will flow like Tao, unseen, he will go about like Life itself with no name and no home.Simple is he, without distinction. To all appearances he is a fool.His steps leave no trace. He has no power. He achieves nothing, has no reputation.

Since he judges no one, no one judges him. Such is the perfect man: His boat is empty.

Seeing the way that Purple Swamphen crosses the road in Mallorca (presumably to get to the other side) with that purposive look on his face is quite uplifting. The photographs are all extremely beautiful. I had never heard the expression "if you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world" before, but it really hits home.

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk/poet, fashioned his versions of this text from two prior Chinese translations.

This passage --

"He will flow like Tao, unseen, he will go about like Life itself with no name and no home.Simple is he, without distinction. To all appearances he is a fool.His steps leave no trace. He has no power. He achieves nothing, has no reputation."

-- presents itself to me with a luminous clarity, in relation to these images, from the natural world, of a creature of phenomenal beauty and "no name to come"; that is, no fame, no reputation, no historical identity, no wish to be remembered as an individual, indeed no concern whatsoever with any of these issues so important to humans.

This from the perspective of one who is himself, conversely, while possessed of no natural beauty whatsoever, remains laden with a noisome boatful of entanglements, accumulations, agitations, and other unnecessary baggages of a sort that will soon enough end up under the waves anyway... so (the text and photos silently asked), why not now?

The red shoes... possibly "reflecting" the widespread success of Michael Powell's film in the swamps?

Being indeed old, I think I do understand the thinking, but as to the doing (or is it the not-doing?), well...

Now you mention it, Artur, "Swamphen" (while correct) does begin to have a strange ring, once one begins to conjure in the imagination large muddy zombielike things arising amid the mists and ignis fatui of the swamps and fens... or phens?